That is all the evidence it is necessary for me to detail here, nor need I reproduce the address of the coroner, who carefully examined in his summing-up the possibilities of suicide, and rather discounted them.
The jury retired into the study—the room in which Sir Philip’s dead body had been found—to consider their verdict. It was not quite such a simple matter as one might suppose. My fellow jurymen were deeply impressed with the heavy responsibility thrust upon them, quite unnecessarily so, since a coroner’s verdict does not matter a snap of the finger one way or the other.
“Now, gents all,” said Tim Dallott, our foreman, “the question is—suicide or murder? Why should he want to commit suicide? And if he did, where did he hide the bottle? You, Mester Hapton”—this to a big, heavy man with a vast head, a considerable farmer in the Dale—“what do you say?”
“Well,” said Mr. Hapton slowly, “there’s no knowing.”
“But you’ve got to know one way or the other,” Tim Dallott cried. “You’ll have an opinion.”
“No, I don’t know as I have,” was the deliberate reply.
“No, I’m not so sure—”
“Well, suicide?”
“Ah, but then, you see—”